Atheros AR5006x

[GANDOLF]

Hello all,
I am a complete noob to wireless cards and need some help.

I just bought a acer 5100 laptop with a atheros AR5006X wireless card.

I do not have a router at home but connect to various "hotspots" depending on where I am (hotel, airport, train station, etc).

Kubuntu Feisty installed fine and works very well in a dual boot environement but it doesn't seem to "see" my wifi card. In Knetwork it shows me a lan on eth0 but no wifi card.

So my question is this:
How can I get my wifi card working at startup?

How can I scan "hotspots" for a connection once the card is working?

I searced this forum but couldn't find anything I really understand, so please bear with me and my ignorance.

I would appreciate any kind of help with this.


Thankx in advance
G

[lingenfr]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

Both my atheros cards just work. Is the card enabled in the bios? From a command prompt, type:

dmesg|grep ath

Paste the results here.

[GANDOLF]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

Okay Thanks I'll get to that tonight

EDIT: How does one enable the card in the bios??

[GANDOLF]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

This is the ouput:

danni1@danni1:~$ dmesg|grep ath
[ 20.028000] ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
[ 20.028000] ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
[ 20.192000] ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3)
danni1@danni1:~$

Whatever that means

EDIT: I had a look in the bios. Under enable network (or something like that) it only shows LAN but no WLan or WIFI or whatever.

[Fintan]

Re: Atheros AR5006x for Kubuntu??

I did this under ubuntu: http://ubuntu.cafuego.net/pool/feisty-cafuego/bcm43xx/bcm43xx-firmware_1.3-1ubuntu2_all.deb

Which I found here:
http://www.aschi.ch/?p=22

It works for ubuntu. Under Kubuntu I get this message (or something similar) at install:
Disable ndiswrapper and wifi-radar for this driver to work properly.
Use sudo ndiswrapper -1 and sudo ndiswrapper -e.
You may have to remove /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.

Well by doing the commands I get:
Command not found

So does this mean I have ndiswrapper installed? I doubt it since I never installed it. Or, does this mean it thinks I have it installed?

Aparently this is a kubuntu thing.

Sorry I can't be of more help

[GANDOLF]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

Thanks Fintan I saw that as well but didn't try it. Anyway is noone out there using an atheros card??

Doesn't seem like it. Or maybe my question is just to stupid.

@lingenfr: I updated the bios, it still shows only lan nothing else. Any idaes on that??

[lingenfr]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

Well, maybe here is not a bios option. If there is an on/off switch for the wifi, make sure it is on. FWIW, my dmesg has the same crapola as about tainting the kernel and mine works fine.

[GANDOLF]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

If there is an on/off switch for the wifi, make sure it is on.

Thanks for the feedback. I do have a wifi switch and it is on at boot.

One question: Do you have the linux-restricted-modules installed, are you using ndiswrapper, or does it just work out of the box?
I read somewhere that the restricted modules are nesescary.

[lingenfr]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

All of my atheros cards have worked out of the box with no ndiswrapper required. I do have the restricted modules installed, but I believe my Atheros card worked before the restricted modules were installed. I did edit /etc/iftab to cause my card to be recognized as wifi0 mainly for convenience. If you open that file, it is pretty straightforward to change it.

Here is my /etc/iftab

# This file assigns persistent names to network interfaces.
# See iftab(5) for syntax.

eth0 mac 00:0e:7b:4f:7b:74 arp 1
# ath0 mac 00:11:f5:59:f6:21 arp 1
wifi0 mac 00:11:f5:59:f6:21 arp 1

[GANDOLF]

Re: Atheros AR5006x

Great and thankx again, hopefully for me as well

Could you post your /etc/iftab file for comparison?
As I said I am pretty new to this.

I'll try this as soon as I can.